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A sea of clouds is an
A sea of clouds is an overcast
Overcast or overcast weather, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization, is the meteorological condition of clouds obscuring at least 95% of the sky. However, the total cloud cover must not be entirely due to obscuring phenomena near t ...
layer of cloud
In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may co ...
s, as viewed from above, with a relatively uniform top which shows undulations of very different lengths resembling waves on the sea. A sea of fog is formed from stratus cloud
Stratus clouds are low-level clouds characterized by horizontal layering with a uniform base, as opposed to convective or cumuliform clouds that are formed by rising thermals. More specifically, the term ''stratus'' is used to describe flat, haz ...
s or fog
Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. Reprint from Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus, and is heavily influ ...
and does not show undulations.
In both cases, the phenomenon looks very similar to the open ocean. The comparison is even more complete if some mountain peaks rise above the clouds, thus resembling islands.
Formation
A sea of clouds forms generally in valleys or over seas in very stableair mass
In meteorology, an air mass is a volume of air defined by its temperature and humidity. Air masses cover many hundreds or thousands of square miles, and adapt to the characteristics of the surface below them. They are classified according to la ...
conditions such as in a temperature inversion
In meteorology, an inversion is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property with altitude. It almost always refers to an inversion of the air temperature lapse rate, in which case it is called a temperature inversion. No ...
. Humidity can then reach saturation and condensation leads to a very uniform stratocumulus cloud
A stratocumulus cloud, occasionally called a cumulostratus, belongs to a genus-type of clouds characterized by large dark, rounded masses, usually in groups, lines, or waves, the individual elements being larger than those in altocumulus, and the ...
, stratus cloud or fog. Above this layer, the air must be dry. This is a common situation in a high-pressure area
A high-pressure area, high, or anticyclone, is an area near the surface of a planet where the atmospheric pressure is greater than the pressure in the surrounding regions. Highs are middle-scale meteorological features that result from interpl ...
with cooling at the surface by radiative cooling
In the study of heat transfer, radiative cooling is the process by which a body loses heat by thermal radiation. As Planck's law describes, every physical body spontaneously and continuously emits electromagnetic radiation.
Radiative cooling ha ...
at night in summer, or advection of cold air in winter or in a marine layer
A marine layer is an air mass that develops over the surface of a large body of water, such as an ocean or large lake, in the presence of a temperature inversion. The inversion itself is usually initiated by the cooling effect of the water on th ...
.
Artistic uses
* The term ''Sea of Clouds'' (雲海) is a Chinese poetic term for the surroundings of a mountain's summit, such as the one atHuangshan
Huangshan (),Bernstein, pp. 125–127. literally meaning the Yellow Mountain(s), is a mountain range in southern Anhui Province in eastern China. It was originally called “Yishan”, and it was renamed because of a legend that Emperor Xuanyu ...
.
* ''Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
''Wanderer above the Sea of Fog'' is a painting by German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich made in 1818. It depicts a man standing upon a rocky precipice with his back to the viewer; he is gazing out on a landscape covered in a thick sea of ...
'' is an oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...
composed in 1818 by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscape ...
depicting this phenomenon.
References
Clouds {{Cloud-stub